The US Air Force has announced that it will carry out the first supersonic flight powered by Gas-To-Liquid (GTL) synthetic fuel tomorrow. A 1980s-vintage B-1 "Lancer" swing-wing bomber will take off from Dyess air force base in Texas, filled up with a 50/50 mix of ordinary petroleum jet juice and synthetic, and go supersonic …

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@Peter Fielden-Weston

In what sense is GTL environmentally friendly? Natural gas, i.e. the same stuff you get delivered to you by e-on/british gas/etc. is converted to a liquid fuel. Since it is still a finite resource and will release extra CO2 into the atmosphere, it will not be environmentally friendly.

What GTL does do is reduce the USA's overseas oil dependency, which unlike By ton suggests is actually around 60% of America's total oil supply.

50/50 mix?

The B-One

The B-One isn't actually that old. 1980s is a new jet. Remember that most of our jets are F-15s and such which are 70s and 80s vintage. So is the newer F\A-18, which is from the 80s.

There's of course a never ending stream of new versions of the F-16 and Su-27. They're new versions yes but they're based on jets from the 70s and 80s again.

The bulk of development got cut off after the cold war. We had well over a hundred fighters put out before the 80s, all the way up to the F-111 before they started the scheme over again and got all the way up to F-16.

~Since~ the 80s we've had... The F\A-18, F-22, Super-F\A-18 and the F-15E. Four new fighters in the past two decades, and two of them are updates to older ones.

Point is, "80s vintage" is new in this market. (And yes I know the B-One is a bomber, but we haven't had many new bombers either.)

P.S. According to Wikipedia there's a proposed updated version, the B-One-R.

But I'm sure the current version is still more than capable of boning anyone, any time, anywhere.

Old dog

Actually the B-1 was conceived in the 70s, got cancelled as the B-1A and then revived in the 80s as the B-1B I believe. So it is fairly old, certainly compared to the Eurofighter, Rafale, Raptor, Predator et al. Though as you say, most air forces are mainly fielding older gear.

not supersonic

The fleet of F1-B's aren't supersonic. That capability was ditched in the B1-A to B1-B redesign of various things, including the engine inlets. While they might make booms in a dive, the test flight isn't going to.

I'm wrong, wrong, wrong!

"Unlike the B-1A, the B-1B made no attempt at Mach 2+ speeds. Its maximum speed at altitude is Mach 1.25 (about 950 mph or 1,530 km/h),[21] but its low-level speed increased to Mach 0.92 (700 mph, 1,130 km/h).[18] Technically, the current version of the aircraft can exceed its speed restriction, but not without risking potential damage to its structure and air intakes."

FIscher-Tropsch

From New Scientist last week:

"The idea is simple. Find a way of removing an oxygen atom from a CO2 molecule and you are left with carbon monoxide (CO). From there it is but a short step to hydrocarbon riches. Mix CO with hydrogen, pass the mixture over a catalyst, and out comes liquid hydrocarbon fuel. This reaction, called the Fischer-Tropsch process, was invented as long ago as the 1920s. It was used by Germany during the second world war, when oil was in short supply, to make petrol from gasified coal, and apartheid-era South Africa did the same when sanctions blocked oil imports."

(http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/mg19726451.600-turning-cosub2sub-back-into-hydrocarbons.html -- you'll need to subscribe to read the whole article though... Maybe El Reg can use their reprint rights on your behalf...)

So, I'm guessing while you can use natural gas or coal as your source of hydrogen, thats more for convenience and even then environmentally its not as bad as some have assumed... (as they use atmospheric CO2 at the front end of the process).